A transparent assessment of the costs and risks associated with India's ambitious nuclear plans must be made before any ground is broken at Jaitapur or elsewhere. You really have to hand it to the nuclear industry. In any other sphere of the economy, a major industrial disaster is likely to have adverse, long-term financial consequences for the company or companies whose product or activity was involved in the accident, regardless of...

Asserting that nuclear power will play a major role in meeting the energy needs of the country during the 12th Five-Year Plan, the Planning Commission on Thursday said the country needed an additional 1,00,000 MW of power during the 12th Plan period (2012-17) and therefore capacity expansion should be undertaken keeping the safety measures intact. Making a presentation to the Prime Minister at the full-fledged meeting of the Commission, Deputy Chairman...

India's food inflation nudged up after three successive weeks of decline to 8.74 per cent for the week ended April 9 compared to 8.28 per cent recorded in the previous week as fruits, meat and poultry products became costlier, official data showed on Thursday. Limited data on the wholesale price index released by the commerce and industry ministry also showed a rise in the index for primary articles, from 11.4 per...

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund convene for their annual Spring Meetings here, soaring food prices are high on the agenda, prompting some analysts to fast-forward to 2050 and the question of how to nourish the mid-century's estimated world population of 8.9 billion people – the majority of whom will live in developing countries. "More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and...

Rising farm wages, which have a major impact on food prices, may force the government to devise a blueprint in which agricultural work is included under a widened ambit of a government's flagship job surety scheme, a key government official said. "We may need to come up with some sort of a special agreement for wage payment to beneficiaries working on farms since they are privately owned," Ashok Gulati, noted farm...